Halloween's a-comin'!

Hi, all.

Sometimes I read seasonally. For instance, conditioned by years in grade school and college, I feel like reading a book with a literary rep. about the time school starts -- this year's was Twilight by William Gay -- and I often pull out something like A Christmas Carol or Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (M.R. James) for the December holidays.

Come Oct., though, as the nights get dark earlier and the leaves begin to clutter the pavement and lawns, I want to settle into something ... outre, uncanny, spooky, ghostly, ... wicked. Works I've read in the past include,

This year I'm already two-thirds through Ramsey Campbell's Ancient Images -- unless it tails off badly, I'll be mentioning this in the reading thread and probably in the recommendations thread -- and I'll probably follow it up with either Campbell's Midnight Sun or with Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October.

So ...

Am I the only one who tailors his reading for October and Halloween?

If not, what have you read in the past? And what are you planning on reading to get in the mood this year?

John Joseph Adams recently published anthology The Living Dead could be good, well actually it IS good. I finished it up about a week and half ago and liked most of what I read. I'll be posting my review closer to Hallowe'en.

Al Sarrantonio has quite a few Hallowe'en themed novels.

I've been meaning to get to Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest for a while.

John Joseph Adams recently published anthology The Living Dead could be good, well actually it IS good. I finished it up about a week and half ago and liked most of what I read. I'll be posting my review closer to Hallowe'en.

I look forward to that. I'm not big on zombies, but that has a good line-up of writers.

Al Sarrantonio has quite a few Hallowe'en themed novels.

I've been meaning to get to Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest for a while.

How about Neil Gaiman's new one - The Graveyard Book?

I have one of Sarrantonio's Halloween books, but haven't read it, yet, and I'm also looking forward to hearing what other people have to say about the Gaiman -- his Coraline would also be a good Halloween read, sitting somewhat closer to Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes than to Partridge's novel. I did like Dark Harvest; it wasn't quite what I was expecting -- I didn't realize it would be written in a noir-ish style -- and that turned out to be a good thing.

What bout Weston Ochse? His novel Scarecrow Gods won the Bram Stoker award for Superior Achievement in First Novel in 2005?

I've heard of it, but haven't come across it yet. Sounds like it might be a good choice, though.

Another book came to mind: Blind Voices by Tom Reamy. It's been a long while since I read it, but it had some of the Bradbury flavor to it. I liked it at the time and it makes a good companion read with Something Wicked This Way Comes. (Other good companions for SWTWC are, in one direction, The Circus of Dr. Lao and in a very different way, Stewart O'Nan's The Night Country, which is dedicated to Bradbury.)

EZ: There's a great audio copy of The Dunwich Horror from the 1945 radio show SuspenseHERE.

As for me, well, plans rearranged. In the end, my reading seems to consist of the Illustrated Version of Stephen King's 'Salems Lot. It's been a while since I read the original. Old deserted houses and vampires. Great stuff.